Superstition

I consider myself to be about averagely superstitious. I'll walk under ladders, I've broken more mirrors than I can remember (stress makes me clumsy- not a stellar character trait for a future doctor), Friday the 13th is just a day.

But I have my little things. Like when I was a competitive kayaker, I had to do exactly the same warm-up before every race. And when I did theater, I had a very precise sequence of vocal exercises before every show/audition. I also had a lucky belly-button ring for extra-important auditions only.

I find myself playing little mind games now in the hospital. If I'm standing in a complicated surgery, I force myself to breathe evenly and slowly and pay very close attention to what's going on. This started as a little joke with myself when I got bored during operations. One of my classmates is really big on Reiki and energy healing. Inspired by him, I would amuse myself while I was standing and holding retractors for eight hours by trying to focus all my positive energy on the patient and see if I could, for example, slow down their heart rate or bring up their blood pressure. I was variably successful, as you might imagine.

But now, once in a while, we'll be operation a patient I particularly like, and I find myself playing that little game, but for real. Like if I focus hard enough on the monitors and I think positive thoughts into their room, maybe it will make a difference.

So this weekend, one of our high risk pregnancy patients lost her baby. Which obviously comes with the territory of high risk pregnancy. Now I know I had absolutely nothing to do with it. But a little part of me feels uncomfortable, because it was a surprise. She was in the ward only for observation because she'd lost a baby before at the same week; and for the week she was there everything looked fine with her pregnancy. The doctors weren't worried about her. I wasn't worried about her. And part of me feels like we let our guard down. Like we weren't sending enough mental energy her way.

Which is silliness. Stuff and nonsense. I know! You can't save someone by worrying about them or thinking about them. If that was the case, we wouldn't need doctors at all, just parents.

But I see the power that a smile has, that holding someone's hand has. A lot happens in the hospital that has a lot to do with healing and very little to do with medicine. And vice versa as well.

So I imagine I'll keep playing my little mind games as long as it makes me feel like I'm doing something when there's really nothing to be done.